


Jewels in a Crown

by MelyndaR



Category: The Chemical Garden Trilogy - Lauren DeStefano
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-03-28 22:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13913472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelyndaR/pseuds/MelyndaR
Summary: “Someday I’ll have a ring that’s made of real gold too,” the girl says. “Someday I’ll be first wife. I know it. I have birthing hips.”I’d laugh under less dire circumstances. “I knew a girl who grew up wanting to be a bride too,” I say.She looks at me, and her green eyes are wide and intense. And for a second I think maybe this girl is right. She will grow to be passionate and spirited; she will stand out in a line of dreary Gathered girls; a man will choose her, and come to her bed flushed with desire.





	1. Chapter 1

_“Someday I’ll have a ring that’s made of real gold too,” the girl says. “Someday I’ll be first wife. I know it. I have birthing hips.”_

_I’d laugh under less dire circumstances. “I knew a girl who grew up wanting to be a bride too,” I say._

_She looks at me, and her green eyes are wide and intense. And for a second I think maybe this girl is right. She will grow to be passionate and spirited; she will stand out in a line of dreary Gathered girls; a man will choose her, and come to her bed flushed with desire._

* * *

Music and colors and the hazy smell of incense and perfumes whirled around Amethyst, and it was so intense that she would’ve choked on it all if it hadn’t been the only world she’d ever known… and if she hadn’t already felt unable to breath.

Rare tears clouded her vision as she ran from the sick room, bare feet slapping against the earth as she fled from one tent to another, weeping.

 _She had failed. She had failed her own_ sister _– her_ twin.

That was the only thought making its way coherently through the cloud of her grief as she ran into the small but empty green tent, collapsing on the far side of it as she cried.

Once upon a time, nearly thirteen years ago now, her mother, Celadon, had lived in this tent with her best friend, Jade. Both of these girls have been dead for over a decade. But over a year before she died, Celadon gave birth to twin girls, whom she named with care, knowing that it would be the only legacy she would leave behind, the only piece of herself that she could leave with these girls, and the only real impact she would ever have on them.

The daughter who would grow up to have hazel eyes and hair a shade darker than her twin’s, that girl was named Jade, after Celadon’s best friend who, at the time, was already in the sick room, dying of the virus at the age of twenty. The girl who would grow to have green eyes and hair so blonde it was nearly white was called Amethyst.

Celadon gave birth to these twins in the sick room, though at least she had a year and a few months before the virus claimed her. She probably should’ve minded having her daughters born into a room with so much death already in it, seeping into the walls and covering everything more thoroughly than their threadbare blankets did, but she didn’t. This way, at least, she had been able to lie on a pallet beside Jade, letting her dying, suffering friend stare at the new lives she’d brought into the world as she explained her reasoning behind the name Amethyst.

There was a girl who Madame had just recently brought into the brothel, a girl who had clearly, instantly become Madame’s favorite – a girl that Madame had christened Lilac. And maybe, by Celadon’s drug-infested way of thinking, giving her daughter a name that made her a Purple – a new category for all the girls here, if it even was one – maybe that would give her daughter a small sliver of favor in Madame’s eyes.

Years later, at nearly fifteen years old, Amethyst didn’t really see where it had done her any favors at all. While their mother was dying before the twins’ second birthday, Amethyst had been the one to keep her company in the sick room; Jade had been too afraid of the place to go anywhere near it. Even after Celadon’s death, Amethyst had kept visiting the sick room, trying to help both the dying and those in labor – the only types of people who were allowed to rest enough to warrant staying there. It hadn’t taken long for the girl who had inspired her name, the girl who had risen to be Madame’s second-in-command, Lilac, to simply task her with helping in the sick room. That became her job for the next eight or so years, but that was something that she had brought upon herself, not something that Madame had done for her.

Helping the sick, the dying, the young mothers and their infants, it had given Amethyst a purpose, a reason for being that she didn’t often see in many others here. It wasn’t the same as being someone’s wife, or being Jade’s sister – it didn’t make her _matter_ – but it gave her a reason to keep living anyway.

And now, the one time a safe delivery – the job she had done for years – had mattered more than ever before… that was when she had failed.

Jade, having fallen pregnant by one of the many men that they entertained during the nights, had miscarried her daughter far too early for the child to survive. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

Dragging her hands away from her face, Amethyst saw through her tears that they had turned pink – salty tears mingling with the warm blood that still covered her hands, the mess of it moving in slow rivers down her arms to drip on the folds of her already bloody purple shift dress.

Jade’s blood.

There had been so much blood, and even Amethyst, who had worked in the sick room since before she could remember, hadn’t been able to stop it in time. Jade had bled to death with her twin still trying to push and wrap and staunch _all the blood_ … and all to no avail.

After what seemed like a year, but what had probably only been half an hour, Amethyst began to try to pull herself together. She wanted, more than anything, to stay here in this tent – it had been left empty for the most part after Celadon’s death, and Amethyst and Jade had treated this place as their hideout of sorts until they’d been old enough to properly become useful to Madame’s business and claim it as their own. Her thoughts wandered back to the sick room, though, as they often did, but this time all Amethyst could do was picture her sister’s corpse – their bone structure and height and general shape were so alike, but their hair and eyes were different colors, and Amethyst had a face full of freckles where Jade did not. Now, though, there was one more difference. Jade’s body was graying, cooling even now, and _Jade_ – everything that made her sister who she _was_ – was _gone_ , more suddenly than either of them had ever seen coming.

Amethyst had always had Jade, even when there had been no one and nothing else. They had counted on one another; they had counted on the fact that, not even six years from now, they would be there to hold one another’s hand and crawl into a bed together, holding one another as they died together. Even when Amethyst had been in the sick room, where Jade had often refused to go, they had each known that they could just call for the other, and their sister would be there.

Except Jade was dead now, and Amethyst was left alone in the green tent, pressing her palms back against her eyes, heedless of the blood and tears smearing her face as she tried to rid her mind of the fact that right this minute someone was stripping the clothes off of her twin and hauling her body to the incinerator.


	2. Chapter 2

There was a dull, unbroken routine to life at Madame’s brothel, but it was a routine that was to be broken for _nothing._ Not even the death of one’s twin and dearest friend was a good enough reason to stay alone inside the safety of your tent once dusk fell. Amethyst stayed in her tent for as long as she could, though, watching with owlish, empty eyes from her spot to the side as a handful of children came in and started picking through Jade’s things, finding what could be reused and passed onto the next girl that Madame deemed “worthy” of her customers. She didn’t even feel that she had the energy to fight the children for her sister’s things – they had been used by many before her, and would be used by someone else next – and the little ones were only acting under Madame’s orders anyway, more than likely.

The children all liked Amethyst; she took time to speak with them, or play with them when she could, and she had always been the best person to go to when one of them had a cut, bump, or bruise. Now it was the children who looked at her with pity in their eyes, but it was clear that they had no more idea than she did of how to heal the crack that seemed to have shattered her heart.

Word travelled like lightening in their little corner of the world; by now everyone would know that Jade and her baby had died, but it wasn’t something that any of the children tiptoeing around her tent – that anyone at all – could fix.

One of the little boys sorting through Jade’s things – he was no more than five years old – tried his best, though. He came over slowly, moving very cautiously and gently for a child, and hugged her around the neck so tightly she felt like she couldn’t breathe. It didn’t matter, though; she hadn’t felt like she was breathing since Jade’s heart had stopped.

Leaning away from her at length, he stared at her face in silence for a moment, curiosity sparking in his eyes, before he abruptly dashed out of the tent and returned a couple of minutes later lugging a bucket of water that was nearly as big as he was. He dropped the bucket down between the two of them, splashing Amethyst’s feet and the hem of her dress as he picked up a rag from inside the bucket. He didn’t wring it out, and the tepid water droplets ran down her cheeks as he wiped at them with the rag.

It wasn’t until she saw the pink and red soaking into the rag that she realized what he was doing – wiping Jade’s blood from off of her skin.

The water on her face had helped rouse her, and Amethyst could feel it now, bits of dried blood on her arms, face, dress, and even in her hair. Under any other circumstances, she would’ve taken the rag from him and shooed them all away from the sight of her, but she didn’t have the energy for even that right then. Instead, she found herself shoving away the thought that someone needed to go clean up the mess that Jade’s miscarriage and death had left in the sick room.

_If she waited here long enough, maybe someone else would do it._

The other children in the tent completed their task and left, their arms full of bright swaths of green fabric, blankets, and pillows, but the boy remained with Amethyst, cleaning off her skin with a silent solemnity that calmed her in a space that impossibly felt twice as lonely now that it was half as full of _things_.

Once the boy – Amethyst couldn’t remember his name at the moment – was satisfied that she was at least free from blood on her body, he stepped back, then gave her one more quick, gentle hug before picking up his bucket of water and disappearing the way he had come.

“Thank you,” Amethyst called softly after him, the words almost an afterthought, said in a voice that sounded very little like her own.

But still, he deserved her thanks. Gentleness was a hard thing to come by here and an even harder thing to _keep_ , she knew that as well as anyone, and she was grateful that he had shown it to her.

There was no such gentleness when Madame’s second-in-command, a girl recently given the position after the death of the girl who had it after Lilac, burst into the tent, snarling, “Didn’t you hear me screaming for you? It’s time, let’s go, let’s go.”

Amethyst didn’t move, still wasn’t sure if she was capable of it.

Seeing that she wasn’t willing to budge, the second-in-command Red named Scarlet – privately Amethyst had always wondered how often Madame had reused that name for the girls that lived here before dropping like distorted, rainbow-colored flies – came over and pulled on her arm viciously. Amethyst let her, barely budging an inch. If Scarlet pulled her arm out of its socket, she could pop it back into place herself; she didn’t care, she just didn’t want to bother with men crawling all over her. Not tonight of all nights.

Scarlet didn’t keep yanking on her arm though. Instead, still high on the new power that she’d been given by Madame, Scarlet raised her hand and slapped Amethyst sharply across the face, shouting, “Get! Up!”

It shouldn’t have bothered Amethyst. Madame had struck her multiple times throughout her life. For that matter, so had some of the men who used her body. After everything that had happened today, one more blow, physical though it was, shouldn’t have bothered Amethyst in the least. However, it was more like the last straw. Meeting Scarlet’s gaze, Amethyst was filled with a rage so sudden and so sharp against absolutely _everything_ that she didn’t even realize that she’d leapt up and struck out until Scarlet was lying on her back screaming with her red sari pooled around her like the blood had pooled around Jade’s body.

In the next moment, Amethyst panicked. Laying hands on another human being with intent to harm was so unlike her that she didn’t know what to do. The only thing she did know was that Scarlet’s screaming was going to alert the guards, and when they came, she was going to be in trouble with Madame. In her frazzled, disjointed state, she wasn’t sure that was something she could handle. Nor was she sure she would be able to calm Madame down if she was too irate, not this time.

So, instead of waiting for the trouble that was to come, she created some of her own.

Flying out of the tent on bare feet, she ran for the edge of the brothel, thinking at first that she could merely lose herself in the tall grass until Scarlet and the others calmed down.

Her feet moved silently in whispering grass, and voices floated into her ears – Scarlet wailing to Madame, explaining what had happened, and then a couple of the guards asking Madame if they should go after her.

Then Amethyst heard something miraculous. Madame, her voice as crackling and wrinkled as a piece of newspaper, answered, “After Amethyst? No, that girl’s too timid to keep a _child_ in line; she herself won’t step far enough out of line to leave.”

“But remember the fence, Madame?” one of the guards pressed.

Amethyst remembered about the fence, even if Madame didn’t; in fact she was leaning against it now. After Jared had died two years ago, the efforts to keep the fence charged with electricity had been quickly abandoned; whoever Madame had put to the task had nearly destroyed their electricity entirely, and Madame had instead decided that her guards could just keep a better look out. They needed the incinerator and the heaters working, but the electricity in the fence they could do without, she said.

Still shaking with adrenaline and fear and anger and grief, Amethyst felt another sharp stab of rebellion as she made a snap decision. Taking care to rattle the fence as little as possible, ignoring the discomfort against her callused bare feet, she scaled the fence and dashed for the road.


	3. Chapter 3

No one even noticed her leave.

It had gotten dark enough that no one had been likely to see her, and the tinny music of Madame’s distorted carnival had hidden any noise she would’ve made.

The _noise_ of it. It had never really struck her before, how very loud nights were in Madame’s brothel. Even running down the road, even once she’d gotten out of sight of the only home she’d ever known, Amethyst could still hear it – the shrieking, laughing girls, the bawdy calls of the customers, the carnival music.

Amethyst listened to the familiar music until it began to fade, sparing a thought for how strange it was to hear it, and to be out here instead of in there, dancing to it.

At the beginning of each night, she and Jade would take each other’s hand and slip out of their tent where they would have just finished getting dressed up and doing each other’s hair and makeup. Jade always complained that it was such a pain to try to cover up Amethyst’s freckles, but then she would moan because she said Amethyst had the prettier hair and eyes; _why couldn’t_ I _have your eyes?_ My _name is Jade, after all!_ Once they were outside, once dusk was falling and the music was starting, they would hold hands and dance together, sisters against the world, soaking in a couple minutes of joy before a man came to sweet-talk one out of the hands of the other’s.

Jade wasn’t back there, though, and without Jade to tether her – to the brothel, to the ground, maybe even to her sanity – it was like Amethyst and everything that she thought she knew about herself had just… taken wing.

And she’d flown away from everything she’d ever known.

Without rhyme, without any real reason, spurred only by the hysteria and rage of grief, she had just ran away from the only home she’d ever had.

Her feet slowed on the road as she began to realize exactly what she’d done. Once she finally stopped running, she noticed that there was a painful stitch in her side, and she doubled over, hands on her knees and breathing hard as she tried to think this through.

Her first thought was to go back. She could explain what had happened – _I lost my mind for a second, I wasn’t thinking, it won’t happen again, I’m sorry_ – and though she would likely be a little roughed up for a while because of whatever punishment Madame doled out, it would be as if nothing had changed.

_Everything had changed. Jade was dead. There’s nothing back there for you._

_Safety._ There was relative safety and security to the degree that she knew what to expect most of the time, unless Madame went on a particularly fierce tangent.

She shoved away the niggling voice that was begging her to continue on to the unknown, and turned in a slow circle, trying to find a landmark that she recognized, something that would start her back on the path to the brothel. That was when she noticed for the first time how night had truly fallen. It was dark, without even the distant light of the Ferris wheel to guide her, which meant that she was well and truly outside the realm of familiar territory.

_How long had she been running? How far had she gone?_

It didn’t feel like it had been that long, or that far, but if she couldn’t see the Ferris wheel, then… then it had been. And she’d done herself a disservice in turning in circles in the darkness. She was no longer even sure which way she’d come from.

Amethyst stood still then, clenching and unclenching her hands at her side because she didn’t know what else to do with them as she tilted her head back and dragged in long breaths of the cool night air. Waiting to catch her breath, she stamped her bare feet, trying to ignore the way they were rapidly getting colder as well outside of the brothel. She wanted to find her way back to Madame, she knew that… she just didn’t know which way to go.

_Was her best option really to just pick a direction, start walking, and hope for the best?_

Right now it looked like it, even though she hated the idea.

Looking up at the stars, she was surprised to notice how _many_ there were when the lights from the Ferris wheel, candles, and hanging lanterns weren’t distorting them. They reminded her of a story she thought she’d heard as a child, about a star that pointed people northward. While she didn’t know if north was the direction that she needed, it was better than nothing, she decided, drawing in one final deep breath as she decided which star she thought was brighter than the others and started towards it.

Amethyst was alone on an empty road in the middle of the night, unguarded, unarmed, with nothing but the clothes on her back. Draining as the day had been – quite possibly the worst day of her life, now that she thought about it – she should’ve known to be more alert than she was.

The air around her felt startlingly crisp and clean, and it made her wonder just how smoky the air was inside of Madame’s little world, but she was too lost in her own thoughts and worries to _really_ notice anything going on around her. She didn’t even register the sound of tires rolling behind her on the road until the van was right upon her.

She whipped around to face the van, eyes widening as she decided within a moment that it wasn’t just the darkness playing tricks on her eyes, the vehicle actually had been given a crude gray paintjob. As soon as she turned to face it, the van’s headlights were flipped on, searing her eyes painfully and blinding her. She wheeled back the other way, stumbling her way into a run, but it was too late.

The driver of the van had much the same idea she did, and ran off the road for a moment, only to cut her off by parking on the road. As she tried to run around the back of the van, a side door slid open, and hands grabbed at her before she’d even made it a handful of steps.

She lashed out desperately, kicking at air and trying to bite and scratch whatever she came into contact with, fighting too hard to notice the pinch of a needle in the crook of her elbow until her head became heavy and her vision tunneled. Even doing her best to fight it, she was asleep within seconds.


	4. Chapter 4

_Jade called to her, drowning in a lake the color of Amethyst’s eyes, reaching for help that wasn’t coming as blood trickled from her eyes and gushed from her mouth, turning her screams into horrible gurgling noises until she slipped beneath the beautiful water of the lake._

_The world tilted, and then Amethyst was in the green tent at the brothel, flat on her back and begging for mercy, for help, as Scarlet stood over her, pummeling her with blows that sound oddly metallic as they land on her._

_“No one is coming,” Scarlet snarled. “No one is going to help you.” She smiled cruelly, and her smudged lipstick melted from her face as she said, “That’s the reality for you now, isn’t it?”_

_Reality…_ The word echoed in Amethyst’s skull, rattling around, Scarlet’s voice whispering like a ghost into her ears as she did her best to pull herself out of her drug-riddled haze.

After living in Madame’s world of opiates and incense, she had to wonder just how _much_ she had been injected with – and what it was in the first place – to render her unconscious for what had apparently been the entire ride… in the back of a Gatherers’ van.

Panic didn’t even have time to set in as the full extent of what had happened and was still happening came back to her.

Leaving the brothel, not being able to get back, the Gatherers… The sound that her dream had registered as Scarlet hitting her had actually been a Gatherer banging on the side of the van as he had opened the side door. “Rise and shine, ladies!” he called, and though he must’ve been in his early twenties, the darkness in his eyes made him seem oddly, impossibly middle-aged.

Blinking out at the blinding sunlight beyond the man, Amethyst vaguely considered making a run for it, but her head was still heavy, and she was weak with hunger, thirst, and drugs. Tempting as the idea was, she knew she wouldn’t make it far at all. At best, the Gatherers would catch her again. At worst, they wouldn’t bother trying to catch her, but would shoot her in the back as she ran.

At one point, the van that she’d been transported in had probably belonged to a family, judging by the spot for six or seven seats, but all but the first two seats had been taken out, the windows had been painted over except for up front. A sheet of metal had even been wedged between the seats and the rest of the van. Amethyst and – she counted as they got out in front of her – three other girls had all been sitting in the back of the van, slumped against one another and alternately silent and screaming as the sedative ran through their systems.

The sedative that still wasn’t entirely out of her system, the one that made it a little more dangerous than it already was to run away… it was because of that, admittedly among other reasons – like the guns she saw the Gatherers had at their hips – that she didn’t run away. Instead, she climbed meekly, dizzily from the van and stood in line with the other girls. She reached for the hand of the girl nearest her, whether for comfort or stability she wasn’t sure, and the girl clung tightly to her, as if holding onto Amethyst would help her hold herself together.

Amethyst forced her head up so that she could look around. She had no idea how long or far they’d been driven, just that it was daylight, and she still didn’t see any landmarks that looked familiar, not even the Ferris wheel in the distance. But she couldn’t force her foggy brain to work, to notice anything else. It was hard enough to keep her head from hanging down listlessly, and she felt like she was hearing things from underwater.

Maybe that was why it took her a minute to notice the obvious.

There were two other men here, besides the Gatherers. Amethyst couldn’t hear what they were saying, though she wasn’t sure if that was because of the drug still dulling her senses, or if they really were just far enough away. They were standing close together outside of a sleek black limousine, the likes of which she’d only ever seen rich first generations use as they came and went from the brothel. They were clearly wealthy men, one elderly and hunched over, one hand wrapped around the handle of a cane as he spoke to a much younger boy of maybe eighteen. Perhaps _speaking_ to him was too nice of a term; Amethyst noticed disinterestedly that they seemed, from where she stood, to be arguing.

The Gatherers must have been getting impatient with them, though, because one of the gray-coated men called, sounding like he was trying his best to remain cordial, “Gentlemen? I’m sure you remember that we have a transaction to make here, correct?”

Both of the men looked over at the Gatherers, then back at each other, and whatever the younger man saw in the elder’s eyes made him stand a little straighter as he said, “Of course.”

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” the elder apologized. His voice was wispy, Amethyst thought, in that same broken way as Madame’s – the way of an elderly, perhaps even ill, person – though his tone lacked the roughness that Madame’s had thanks to her cigarettes. It was also a bit dry, she noted, as if he didn’t particularly appreciate the company that the Gatherers made for.

“All four girls for the previously agreed upon price,” the older of the two Gatherers said, stepping forward with a hand already outstretched towards the suitcase that the younger man was holding.

The elderly man and his… son? Grandson? Amethyst didn’t know, and didn’t register it as particularly relevant as she started looking for a way to maybe slip away from them all unnoticed. The two men exchanged another glance before the younger drew himself up again and said, “There’s been a change of plans. I’ll only be taking one of the girls.” The elderly man looked away, something unhappy flashing in his eyes as the Gatherers started to protest. The young man, teenager or not, held up a hand to stem the argument and said firmly, “You can still have the same amount of money – on one condition.”


	5. Chapter 5

“What’s that?” the Gatherer asked suspiciously, still eyeing the suitcase.

“The girls that I do not choose must be released, auctioned, or sold to a brothel. They _must not be killed_.”

Amethyst knew on some distant level what was happening – the wealthy young man was buying a bride – but she had been far more preoccupied with _escape_ – until now. The young man’s proposition caught her attention, foggy though her brain still felt, and loosened something in her stomach by just a centimeter. Now she turned to focus on the men’s “transaction.”

The Gatherers consulted one another with a look, and the younger of the two said, “There’s a brothel about fifteen, twenty miles from here, if you think the trip is worth the money.”

“I don’t think you understand,” the man with the suitcase said with a thin smile. “Either you take my deal, or you get no money whatsoever. These _are_ my terms, am I clear?”

The elder Gatherer glared at him before nodding sharply. “Fine.” He jerked his chin towards the suitcase, and jerked his thumb towards the quartet of Gathered girls as he said, “Now you give me the case, and pick your girl.”

The young man set the suitcase down on the ground between himself and the Gatherer, then stepped towards the line of girls. The first couple in the line shrank back from him with uncertain whimpers, and he glanced away as if the noises hurt him, stepping up to the girl who was holding Amethyst’s hand.

She met his eyes, and despite the bleariness in her gaze brought on by the drugs, even Amethyst was surprised by the sheer hatred she managed to muster up in her expression. It made sense, though, if the girl had been pulled from anything – or anyone – worthwhile to her. The man surveying them swallowed roughly, wincing away from her like the first two girls had from him.

Then he was standing directly in front of Amethyst.

He was even younger than she had first thought, she realized upon seeing him up close. His eyes were blue, the bright color of a painting’s version of the summer sky. His hair was just long enough to be called shaggy, and the brownish red of old, water-eaten rust underneath the black fedora he was wearing.

She didn’t notice that she was studying him the same way he was her until their eyes met.

Startled, her gaze skittered to the ground, then eased back up to him as something about the way he was looking at her struck her. When she met his eyes again, it was still there. He looked like he nearly wanted to plead with her. _Please don’t hate me. Please don’t be afraid of me._

Once upon a time, half of her lifetime ago, Amethyst had told one of Madame’s girls that she would be someone’s first wife one day. She wasn’t sure when that dream had become less important to her, when she had become complacent in the sick room, in a brothel, under Madame’s thumb, but she didn’t have Jade to go back there to, didn’t have _any real_ reason to return to Madame at all. And once again she found herself thinking that being the wife of a wealthy man seemed like a pretty good idea.

Slowly, hesitantly, Amethyst smiled at the young man in front of her, just a little. He grinned at her as if she’d given him a gift, his shoulders dropping a little as he relaxed.

“You, then?” he asked herm and Amethyst blinked, startled to have been addressed directly.

She was still a little too inhibited by the drugs to consider speaking a good idea, and she wasn’t really sure that was how this was supposed to go, anyway. _Was it?_

He didn’t actually seem to require a response in any case as he put a hand on her shoulder and gestured with his other arm towards the waiting limousine. Though she wasn’t _entirely_ sure that she wanted the position she’d just been given, she went along without protest. After all, she didn’t have anything to lose, and living in luxury certainly didn’t sound bad.

She just wasn’t expecting to be drugged again the moment the door to the limousine closed. The man who had chosen her had climbed into the driver’s seat, and the elderly man got into the passenger’s seat; maybe that should’ve forewarned her of something, but it still surprised her when a white cloud seeped from a vent near her head.

Amethyst didn’t even have the energy left to do anything but choke out a cough as she closed her eyes.

* * *

The drive back to the mansion was quiet, and Jaxson Coleman was glad for a couple of reasons. For one, on a very practical level, he didn’t get very many chances to drive vehicles, so he needed to concentrate as well as he could. And, secondly, he really wasn’t sure _what_ to say to his father.

Years ago, before the virus had ever been discovered in the first place, his parents had seven children. They had always wanted a large family, and they had it. And then the virus struck, and they had watched that family they loved fade into dust. They had sworn off of having more children, and for years they’d gotten their way. Then, when they were old enough that they had thought it would no longer even be possible, Jaxon had come along.

And the worst part of it was this: grief had so destroyed his parents before he was even born that they were still going to get their way. They weren’t going to have to bury him, judging by their current health. He was going to have to bury them.

And when his parents had realized this, they had decided that they once again wanted a big family. Jaxon didn’t necessarily think that this was a selfish desire on their part; they loved him dearly and understood that even after their deaths, they wanted him to continue to be surrounded by people who loved him. But in this world, in their small biological family, there was really only one way that they knew of to expand their family.


	6. Chapter 6

Jaxon had been thirteen the first time his parents had gotten into the Mustang with him while a second chauffer had driven the limousine he was now in. They had met Gatherers – the men never ceased to make his skin crawl, to make his father wrinkle his nose behind their backs, and his mother had refused to meet them a second time – who were waiting with a pair of sixteen-year-old twins. Though the Colemans had taken both girls, Jaxon had only married one. They’d had a son as quickly as possible, and for two years that had been enough.

 Then, a year ago, his parents’ health – particularly his father’s – had begun to decline even further, and though they’d never adapted terribly well to the changes brought to the world by the virus, they had encouraged him to take more wives. So he did, paying a pair of Gatherers to deliver three more brides to him.

His parents, Jack and Martha, hadn’t wanted to leave it alone there, though, and six months later, to Jaxon’s growing unease, he’d found himself marrying a fifth and sixth wife.

When his parents had pressed him to marry yet again, it had become a point of contention between him and them. That had been hard, because he had _always_ been close to his parents. But his parents, gods help him, in their love for him and their desire to see him surrounded by a loving family – they had wanted him to marry four more women.

Ten wives altogether. A nice round number. Jaxon had gotten into a shouting match with his father and put his foot down _hard_ against having more wives then the godforsaken _president_. His father had went right ahead and requested as man girls as he wanted his son to have.

Jack and Jaxon had been arguing about it – albeit quietly – even as they’d gotten out of the limo in front of the Gatherers. And now that Jaxon had gotten his way – it felt like he’d had to nearly physically ram the thought, the _decision,_ into his parents’ heads – now that he’d made it clear that he had no intention of ever marrying again, he wasn’t sure what to say.

He pressed a button on the dash and the tinted screen between the drivers’ and passenger’s seats and the back slid down, leaving only a clear pane of glass between.

Both Jaxon and Jack looked at the girl through the rearview mirror, and the latter commented, “She seems like Lottie.”

“She _looks_ a little like Lottie,” Jaxon corrected, referencing his youngest wife.

The girl in the back looked to be Lottie’s age, and her hair was blonde like Lottie’s, though it was a significantly lighter shade. “And here I thought you might prefer darker-haired women,” Jack remarked casually.

Jaxon blinked in surprise at the idea, and asked – willing to go along with the topic just to fill the silence – “What makes you say that?”

“Well, Charity, Sarina, and Deanna are all dark-haired.”

“But Mikayla and Lottie are blonde, and Fallon is a redhead.”

 _Ye gods, he felt like he was collecting them_ – wives – _and he hated it!_

“Still, given the fact that you only chose one wife this time instead of taking every one of the few girls that the Gatherers brought… I always suspected you would choose a dark-haired girl if you ever made the choice not to take them all.”

“You expected me to choose the third girl in the line, then?” Jack nodded, and Jaxon drew in a breath through his nose in silence. He didn’t consider himself a temperamental man, but he had to remind himself that his father hadn’t gotten as close to the girls as he had; Jack might not have seen the absolutely hateful way the brunette had glared at him. He didn’t say anything about that thought, though, remarking instead, “Maybe that means I’m looking for something that has nothing to do with hair color.”

“And you think you found that ‘something’ in this one?” Jack asked, gesturing vaguely to the girl in the backseat.

“Maybe,” Jaxon answered, though disquiet only stirred further in his stomach, because, truthfully, the only thing he’d _really_ noticed about the girl was that she had seemed to dislike the sight of him less than the others had.

“Good,” Jack said, and though father and son still weren’t necessarily _happy_ with one another, Jack seemed to become more resigned to the state of affairs the closer they got to their home.

They lapsed into an at least slightly more comfortable silence until Jaxon parked the limo in their garage. Four male attendants met them as they got out of the vehicle.

Jaxon resisted the urge to wince as he was reminded at their presence that they each anticipated having a girl to carry up to the wives’ floor. “There’s only one girl,” he announced, ignoring the confused looks in the attendants’ eyes. “If one of you would be so kind as to help my father back to his rooms, though…”

“Oh, I’m fine,” Jack insisted, but Jaxon hadn’t been able to miss the growing weariness in his eyes the longer they were out, and he didn’t actually resist now when a couple of the men moved to escort him upstairs.

One of the remaining men opened a back door of the limo, and the other reached in and scooped the sleeping – _no, drugged; he had no real right to forget what exactly these girls had been put through_ – girl awkwardly into his arms. Her head dropped sharply backwards, and Jaxon cringed, reaching instinctively forward to reposition her head even as the attendant adjusted so that she could rest more comfortably with her head against his shoulder. Jaxon retracted as they all piled into the elevator, the feeling of this new bride’s hair a ghost sensation against his fingertips.

He curled his hand into a fist, trying to shake off that feeling, but also to brace himself for whatever reaction might meet him on the wives’ floor. _Would they be happy he’d chosen only one more wife? Or angry? Or would they even care?_

_How had this even become his life?_


	7. Chapter 7

Before the thought could even really take root, the doors to the elevator slid open. Seven teenage girls and four adolescents were lined up just outside the elevator, a line on each side of the door like old-fashioned soldiers in parade rest.

“There’s only one girl?” Lottie asked almost immediately, and though it was phrased like a question, it… really wasn’t.

Various expressions of disgust, concern, and relief met this realization.

“So there is…” Sarina drawled. Then she turned and wandered back to her room, seemingly disinterested in the situation.

Mikayla and Fallon wandered off, too, but the four boys – who had been purchased for the express purpose of being the domestics of the four new brides – stayed frozen uncertainly in their spots, as did Jaxon’s two youngest brides, and his oldest.

Charity was the last one remaining in the lineup, and she was the only one to speak, trailing behind Jaxon as he followed the two attendants to his new wife’s bedroom. “She’s the only one,  
 she doublechecked, apparently none too happy with him.

_She had never been happy with him, anyway, had she?_

“Yes.”

He stopped outside the bedroom doorway and turned to face Charity just in time for irritation to flood her expression. “There are only ten rooms on this whole floor; may I remind you how much rearranging we did to prepare for not one, but four, more girls up here?”

He bit back against telling her that she hadn’t done anything; attendants had. “I know, Charity.”

He might as well have not spoken.

“We moved Celeste and the boys upstairs, as well as the _entire_ library. There were people swarming all over this floor at all hours for a _week_. It upset everyone!”

“Then,” Jaxon broke in with frayed patience in his tone. “’Everyone’ should be happy to know that in another week everything will be back to the way it was before anything was moved at all. I’ll have attendants start reestablishing the nursery and library right back where they were.”

“And Celeste can move back down here too?”

At his wife’s question, only three long years of self-constraint on the subject kept him from outwardly showing his displeasure. “Sure.”

Charity nodded, and though she was content enough to walk away, she still wasn’t happy – at least not with him.

He was halfway through silently swallowing a sigh when one of the four young attendants said in an uncertain voice, “Governor Jaxon?”

Hearing something odd in the boy’s voice, Jaxon turned to him. “Yes?”

“Do you know why there’s blood on her dress?” the boy asked, looking from the blonde to Jaxon.

Jaxon stepped immediately further into the room at the alarming question, and Lottie and Deanna leaned in as far as they could without breaking the rarely-spoken rule of never entering another wife’s room without permission. “What do you mean, blood?” Jaxon demanded. “Are you sure that’s what it is?”

“Yes, sir, governor,” the boy replied gravely.

Plucking a rag out of a basin of water that had been left on the bedside table, the boy scrubbed at the threadbare purple fabric of her clothing. The rag came away pink with watered-down blood.

Jaxon knew horror flooded his expression as he ordered, “get her out of these clothes, and one of you go get my mother. Find out where that blood is coming from.”

If the Gatherers had hurt this girl – a girl who had only dealt with the Gatherers in the first place because of him and his family – he wasn’t sure he would know what to do with that idea. The worst thing to have happened to any of wives thus far because of Gatherers was that they had overdosed Mikayla on the anesthesia that they had injected her with, and she had ultimately come out of that just fine.

In Jaxon’s mind, however, blood was a different thing all together.

One of the attendants sprinted from the room to get his mother as ordered, and Jaxon slipped from the bedroom, shutting the door behind him so the other three could look over the bloodied girl in peace. Deanna and Lottie stared at him with wide, worried eyes, but he knew of nothing to tell them, so he only put an arm around each of them and shepherded them away from the closed door.

“Why don’t you two go sit in the library, and I’ll let you know if I learn anything,” he suggested.

Lottie didn’t even blink before she reminded him, “Because the library’s a bedroom right now.”

Jaxon gave them both an exasperated look, pleading, “Girls, please.” He glanced down at Lottie’s extended midsection, six months pregnant as she was, and added worriedly, “Besides, I don’t want the –” _The stress of this_ – “this to upset you to the point that it upsets the baby.”

She was so young to become a mother – the youngest of his brides, in fact – and he worried about her. He worried about all of his wives practically all of the time, it felt like, but at the moment he wanted to be able to concentrate on the girl behind the closest bedroom door.

Deanna slipped into her own bedroom next door without any protest, silent as she could be, and only then did Jaxon lean closer to Lottie, kissing her temple as he murmured again, “Please?”

She gave him a small smile, nodding as she gave in and walked across the hall to seek entrance into Mikayla’s room.

As Lottie moved out of sight, Jaxon heard the doors to the elevator opening, and he turned to see his mother moving faster than he thought she had in a while. Still, the attendant who’d fetched her ran ahead of her and straight back into the new bride’s bedroom. Jaxon’s mother took a moment to stop at her son’s side and lay a hand on his arm.

“I’m sure she’ll be fine, son.”

And staring down into her calm hazel eyes, that was all it took for Jaxon to believe her. Immediately, he felt inexplicably calmed, but, then again, that was his mother for you.


	8. Chapter 8

Knowing that the girl on the other side of the door would likely be nude now, Jaxon didn’t feel comfortable going into her room, but Martha Coleman breezed right in without a second thought as she shut the door behind herself. Jaxon stood with his forehead leaning against the door, listening to the authoritative intone of his mother’s voice and the answering chatter of the boys for he didn’t know how long.

Eventually, his mother slipped back out into the hallway, looking tired but relieved. Jaxon nearly stumbled as he lost his bracing against the door, but he caught himself on the doorjamb a split second before Mrs. Coleman informed him, “I don’t think it’s her blood at all. She’s not bleeding and doesn’t appear to have been outside of a couple of shallow cuts.”

“You’re sure?” he asked, daring to hope.

“Yes. Right now, my best guess is that she gave the Gatherers quite a fight and drew blood from them, which would be how it came to be on her clothes.”

Jaxon doubted that, given what he’d seen of the Gatherers earlier in the day, but he didn’t argue. Honestly, as long as she was unharmed, he wasn’t sure he even cared. “You’re _sure_ she’s okay?”

His mother nodded. “As certain as we can be until she wakes up.”

* * *

She felt like she was floating, Amethyst noted, and she was halfway afraid to open her eyes lest she find she was falling somehow. Her eyelids were heavy anyway; it felt like being surrounded by Madame’s opiate-laced air, only somehow calmer, and yet much worse. She didn’t like the feeling, she decided, and forced her eyes to open.

Lace. There was lace everywhere, she saw first off, and after the neon rags of Madame’s brothel, the pastel softness of this place caught her off-guard.

But there were more things to consider than fabric choices, and her eyes continued scanning the room with barely a pause. Pale peach walls, multi-colored rag rugs and quilted bedcovers, golden oak furniture. Double-paned windows with no opening mechanism, a door to the hallway with an old-fashioned keyhole—

Amethyst jerked in surprise as she finished her analyzation of the room looking directly at her bedside—

And there was a boy sitting in a chair at her bedside.

They blinked at each other, each appearing surprised by the others’ presence, before the boy stood and pressed his hand against her forehead. “You woke up sooner than you’d been expected to,” he remarked, quiet and calm in the still room. Then he took her wrist in his hand and tried to find her pulse. Recognizing what he was trying – and failing – to do, Amethyst took his little hand and pressed it to the proper point. He blinked in surprise again, but they both stayed silent until he pulled his hand away, satisfied apparently, and added, “But at least you don’t seem to be reacting badly to the ani—anti—”

“Anesthesia?” Amethyst suggested in a raspy voice, letting her eyes flutter closed for only a second.

It wasn’t something she’d ever seen used, but she was pretty sure it was what had been used _on_ her during the ordeal.

The boy nodded, reaching for a glass of water on the nightstand and bringing its straw to her lips. “Sip slowly, okay?”

She obeyed, but he took the glass away far too soon for her liking. “Who are you?” she asked curiously, trying to catch his serious brown gaze.

“Leo,” he replied, meeting her eyes. He looked like he was inwardly older and more mature than even she felt. “I was selected to be your attendant, Lady…”

He trailed off, and she realized that he was waiting for her to divulge her name. So she did. It wasn’t as if that was really something that she could hold out on for very long at all anyway – _and why would she in the first place?_ This was her home now, and this was one of the people in that home.

“Amethyst,” she supplied. “My name is Amethyst, like the color.”

She seemed to have surprised him again. “Pretty,” he murmured, taking a step back from the bed. “I’m… going to let the house governor know that you’re awake. If you’re okay enough to be left alone for a minute?”

Amethyst nodded – “I’ll be fine, Leo,” – and the boy slipped out of the room. She heard the jangle of a key and the lock on the door clicked sharply. She inhaled just as sharply, realizing she’d only exchanged Madame’s secure prison for another, perhaps prettier and kinder, one. And she found that she was… okay with that. After all, without Jade, the fact remained that she had nothing to lose, so maybe, _hopefully_ , she had just given herself over to gaining something better. Like a husband, sister wives, wealth and comfort, maybe even her long-forgotten dream of being someone’s first wife, their most-beloved in a world where girls were used and discarded as if they had no more value than the gnats on the food tossed to them.

But right now, right this second, she decided that the only thing she _really_ wanted to get was another drink of water. To that end, she sat up very slowly, propping herself up on one arm and hating the effort it took to keep her head raised. Her very brain felt heavy, weighted by the drugs slowing it down.

Her hands didn’t feel quite so heavy – just a little disconnected from her body as she moved – and the water glass was within her grasp when the bedroom door opened.

A brunette head popped around the doorjamb. “Oh, good, you’re awake!”

Two blondes darted into the room ahead of the brunette, and the taller of them, seeing what Amethyst was trying to do, said, “here,” and sat on the edge of the bed, picking up the water glass. She held the glass with one hand and put her other arm behind Amethyst’s shoulders, helping her sit up as she said, “Sip slowly.”

This time Amethyst ignored the instructions warily, even if she could at least guess the wisdom of them.

“Hey, now, it’s not going anywhere,” the older girl promised, and it didn’t until Amethyst pulled away from the glass herself.

“Thanks,” she said, gasping slightly as she drew in a breath.

“No problem. I’m Mikayla, by the way, and this is Lottie and Deanna.”


End file.
